Marketing vs. marcom

Susan Getgood makes an important distinction between marketing and marketing communications:

One of the (many) things that I find both amusing and frustrating in the ongoing debate about marketing’s role in the business is that so often people on both sides on the debate (ie, marketing rules versus marketing sucks) forget that marketing isn’t synonymous with marketing communications.

Marketing 101.

Marketing is the four Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion.

Marketing Communications is primarily concerned with one P: Promotion. It is part of marketing, it is not ALL of marketing.

…

I think we spend far too much time on creative, ’cause it’s “fun” and not nearly enough time on getting the fundamental strategy right, ’cause that’s HARD!

Scandalous though it may be, I believe that so-so creative will still do all right if the fundamental strategy is sound. But the slickest promo campaign cannot save a crappy strategy.

And you should always strive for excellence in both.

Credit: David Armano

Yes it’s an important distinction, one that I suspect many people with either term in their job titles aren’t aware of. On a separate track, I wonder how clearly the distinction can be drawn in the digital domain, where product development and promotion are sometimes intertwined.

But that’s not the point of this post.

Instead, it set me thinking about a couple of graduate programmes I came upon recently.

NYU pitches its MS Integrated Marketing as the fast track to CMO.

MBA programmes such as those offered by INSEAD and Chicago GSB aren’t as explicit – perhaps because they take in and churn out people from a vast range of backgrounds – but it’s hard to miss that their featured alumni are mostly of CEO stock.

Medill in Northwestern says of integrated marketing communications that

IMC was pioneered at Medill, and some of the greatest minds will be your professors…

Bold claims all.

Given that marketing is a subset of business and marketing communications relates to one facet of the marketing mix, business > marketing > marketing communications.

Would it stand to reason then that the potential career peak after each programme is:

MBA – CEO

Masters in marketing – CMO

Masters in IMC – Agency head

It might be worthwhile to compare opportunity cost (tuition fees + living expenses + years of lost income) with potential rewards. Just like how MBA rankings work.

But any such cross-programme comparison will necessarily be based on many assumptions, and will ignore the one unquantifiable variable: personal interest.